The UKBA tries to clear its asylum backlog, but not its conscience

The UK Border Agency’s messy attempt to resolve thousands of outstanding asylum claims has led to yet another day of terrible headlines. But ministers know how to stop this happening again, if they would just have the courage.

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Today’s report
by John Vine, independent Chief Inspector of the Agency, is a damning indictment
of the cavalier way the Agency has handled the so-called ‘legacy exercise’ to
resolve thousands of outstanding asylum claims, many stretching back to the
mid-2000s.

Though the
report focuses on administrative failings, these have a stark human cost. We
know this because Asylum Aid’s solicitors and caseworkers deal with many people
who are stuck in the bewildering limbo that is the UKBA’s Case Assurance and
Audit Unit. Like many other legal
representatives, we have plenty of unanswered letters languishing in those unopened
boxes.

Those of us
who work closely with the Border Agency can only hope that this report and the
shocked responses to it will act as a genuine wake-up call. In particular, we
hope that those officials within the Agency who feel uncomfortable with the way
that its dominant, gatekeeping culture systematically overwhelms its refugee
protection responsibilities will feel emboldened to demand genuine reform of
the asylum system. And they know exactly
where to start, because a whole host of us – asylum charities, the UN Refugee
Agency, immigration judges, Parliamentarians – have been telling them for years
that a proper focus on getting more asylum decisions ‘right first time’ is the
only way forward.

The quality
of UKBA decision making on asylum claims is all too often
woefully poor. Our research report
last year, Unsustainable,
documented decisions to refuse women asylum made on the basis of information
drawn from American gossip websites and irrelevant or out-of-date case
law. Judges, many evidently unimpressed,
overturned half of all those decisions. It's small wonder we’ve ended up with a
backlog.

The Agency is about to embark on another wrong-headed reform of the asylum system – the asylum transformation project – the priorities of which will only embed the culture of disbelief with which so many asylum seekers are already confronted, and which has led to so many of the problems now overwhelming the Home Office. But they can’t hope to address the deep seated problems of the current process if they don’t get their act together on the crucial first moments when someone recounts their need for asylum and receives a decision.

We know as
well as anyone that reform comes painfully slowly from the Border Agency. We also know how easily it might recoil from
reform when under such scrutiny. But they have the tools to start fixing the
asylum system, starting with the quality of its decisions. Reports like this
one have to signal some serious thinking about improving the asylum process,
and quickly.